Posts made by Alveraxus

@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:

I’d ask what was rightfully so about it, but I think we all know. People here have posted that it’s not gamerunners’ responsibility to deal with players’ past MU-related traumas. True enough. Howeever, the fact that it’s well known to be difficult to ask someone a question like this, and that ragequit is a usual result, makes it clear that there’s a “missing stair” right there.

I think we didn’t handle it as tactfully as we could have. The player was freaked out that we knew their IP address, and it kind of escalated from there. I personally could have handled communicate a bit better, I think.

Lessons learned from first time adminning and all.

We had a player who was using VPN to break our alt rules.

I’ve encountered players elseMU who have used VPNs to shield their identity when connecting to a game to violate non-contacts.

I’ve also had players that use a VPN because having it active is the best way to preserve their connection. Or because they are connecting from a work computer (I always recommend against that for any number of reasons, but what people want to do is their own thing).

I have a number of IT friends who run OpenVPN on their router at home. One is a crazy paranoid nutjob, another uses multiple devices to watch things in a buccaneer style.

VPNs make it easier to hide who you are, but personalities and bad behaviors tend to sneak out eventually anyway, and are a better way to keep tabs than IP addresses anyway. Especially since there are plenty of other ways to switch IPs.

We also had a situation where a crackdown on someone violating alt-rules ended up catching someone else who was NOT doing that when we were doing a look at logs and IPs, and (rightfully so) despite how careful we were in approaching them for discussion, they got upset and ended up leaving the game. A lesson learned for us in terms of how to handle.

The short answer, like with anything else - running a game is hard.

@Tez said in Episodic Games & ‘Down Time’:

I’d actually be curious to see how Alveraxus handles this, when they get there. In many ways, a generational jump is episodic, and I know it’s a thought I’ve kicked around as a problem to solve when thinking about generational games or time jumps. Anyone playing there that can speak to it?

tldr: We are still figuring some of it out and might change anyway, but the nutshell is that once we have the Dramatic Conclusion to our Third Act plot (the war that we are kicking off this weekend), we’ll have about a one month period while we sort out everyone’s future characters, during which we’ll have non-ST guided soft RP where players can do epilogue RP for this generation and once their next-gen character is approved, begin prologue/flashback RP with those characters.

So if there’s interest, we can circle back in a few months after we do it and say how it went. I’m sure there will be some good, some bad, and some awful as we stumble our way through things.

Longer version:
We haven’t really fully announced how we’re planning to handle the downtime, and we’re making some changes in our planning now as we are gearing up for what is effectively the Third Act of the Alpha to kick off this weekend, but I can give some general guidelines about the plan. Bearing in mind the Captain Coldism about how long the plan lasts (almost as good as the Mike Tysonism). So I don’t expect it to go entirely how we expect it. BUT.

Current idea is that after the dust settles from the climactic war, we’re going to segue into a period of maybe a month or so of soft epilogue RP while we do the administrative details to setup the following generation.

Staff will not be running any plots, although player STers might. The players will have plenty of interesting drama to RP about, based around the outcome of the war, who lived, who died, etc.

OOCly, that’s when players will sort out what they want do for the Beta Generation. Characters who survived - will the survive the 22 years in the time jump? Where do they want to be? Who wants to play children of the existing characters, who wants to do something completely different, etc. We’re going to let the players sort out how they want their relationships to be and what they want their characters to do, and then as those approvals start coming through we’ll likely blend Epilogue into Prologue.

Assuming that we can sort out everything that players want within a month (there may be some succession to attend to as well - our succession mechanic test did NOT go very well, so we’re going to try to learn from that), we’ll plan on kicking things off similarly to how we did the Alpha generation. A lot of ST run social events to let the new characters get to mingle and meet ICly, and then hopefully off to the races.

Can we post ones we don’t mourn or regret?

Dodi : Suppose I could deliver you a star so big that little children in the crap-infested streets of Calcutta know his name.

Peter Dragon : Dodi, I’m eating spring rolls.

Dodi : Sorry. But suppose I could deliver this huge star, I mean, a guy better known than Tom Hanks, and you’d only have to pay him scale?

Peter Dragon : Who is it?

Dodi : Well, he’s a very complicated client.

Peter Dragon : Who is?

Dodi : I can’t tell you.

Peter Dragon : Can you give me a hint?

Dodi : Eh, he had some legal problems.

Peter Dragon : Drugs? Is it Robert Downey Jr.?

Dodi : No, Pete, my man’s clean. Straight-arrow, strong, healthy.

Peter Dragon : Can you give me a bigger hint?

Dodi : Well… he was falsely accused of a double murder.

[pause as Peter looks at him]

Dodi : Now, because of the potential P.R. problems, my agency can’t officially

[makes air quotes]

Dodi : represent him.

Peter Dragon : You’re pitching me O.J. Simpson.

Dodi : Yes, I am. Pete, little children in Calcutta know his face.

Peter Dragon : Yes, they know to run away from it.

Dodi : The name is more recognizable than Tom Hanks.

Peter Dragon : Okay. But, you know what, Tom Hanks refuses to go that extra mile and hack his WIFE to death!

Dodi : He was acquitted, man! Pete, with all due respect, someone’s gonna put him in something, and people are gonna want to see him. Sure, at first, as a curiosity, but I think they’re going to be pleasantly surprised with his acting chops. Now, he’s been studying with a coach- I recently saw him do a monologue from “Raisin in the Sun”.

Peter Dragon : Really? How was that?

Dodi : Truthfully? It was very moving.

Peter Dragon : Dodi?

Dodi : Yeah?

Peter Dragon : Get out!

Dodi : How about a villain? He’ll play a villain. Come on, who’s scarier?

[mimes stabbing]

Peter Dragon : YOU’RE scarier! God!

Dodi : Come on, Peter, just the shock value sells a million tickets, and he’s going at bargain-basement rates. Hey Pete, do you play golf?

Peter Dragon : You know what? I think I just threw up, like, inside my throat? Get out, please.

[shuts the door on him]

Dodi : [from outside] Okay, but just a word of warning: The guys at Fox are all over him!

Yeah, point taken. Wasn’t my intent, just thought it was an interesting discussion on a topic relevant to my interests, but I see how it could be taken that way looking back at the comments. My apologies.

@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:

Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.

Out of curiosity – do you mean OOCly inclusive, or that themes on all games should be ICly inclusive?

I know you’re asking Pacha, but since it came up with regards to our game I figured I’d share my philosophy.

OOCly goes without saying, IMO.

I think it’s an interesting question regarding ICly inclusive. I know that we made a choice to support the idea of “any gender can perform any role” and the various other precepts, and we acknowledge that it stands in contrast to the historical periods we are somewhat trying to emulate. And yes, I can see some people saying that it “breaks their immersion”. Even thought we are an “original” theme, we’re still drawing heavily from a tropey tradition.

Our attitude is that we realize that may limit our audience, and we are ok with that. We would rather have a safer space to allow anyone to play what they want, even if it defies traditional roles (not saying we agree or disagree with those roles, but in many cases, they are traditions) than make anyone feel othered or not, or not free to express who they are.

Yeah, I’m sure there are some folks who find that a turnoff and won’t play. That’s ok.

This isn’t necessarily to criticize any game who does things differently, it’s just a statement of what I (and the rest of the team) feel about our game.

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:

it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have

That has to be one of my least favourite parts of all this nonsense Beta-maxing. Obviously, it’s not my game, not my vision, and YMMV, but if you’re going to radically change the IC world to match your “vision,” you should do that before you open, not when people are actively playing your game for months.

Having the flexibility to do something and the wisdom sometimes not to are two different things.

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

Side peeve: why do games insist that they are in beta for years? Why can’t we just admit that things change? ARX I BLAME YOU.

I think some major video games started that trend as a way to avoid accountability to their fans, and it just caught on everywhere. (I got curious when it started because I have a distinct memory of logging into a game regularly and it always saying it was “in beta” (like Orna or something), and quick google fu showed me a post on Steam in 2013 complaining “When will this trend of forever beta going to end”?)

I agree, though. At least for us, we have a very specific planned cadence - Alpha (now) to test out the specific systems we want to test out where things are going to explode or not (one recent test totally exploded, for example) and we change things on the fly, and then hopefully one Beta generation where we stick with what we learned in Alpha. And then that’s it.

It doesn’t mean we can’t change something that doesn’t work, but we won’t be actively looking to change things after Alpha/proof of concept stage.

That being said. There is some comfort in saying you’re always in beta because it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have. “It says Beta on the box, so you know what you are signing up for.”

@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:

What I was saying is that in my (personal, subjective) experience of the genre, I see/have seen very few examples of it actually happening, whether the support is there or not.

AH, that makes sense. I’m not sure how the trends are going. Based around “active” characters, we’ve got 3 NB characters (and one about to come out of chargen) versus about 80 binary. I obviously am not tracking orientation. But that does seem low, even though we offer it and encourage players to play as they would like.

Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.

I agree, and to be fair, I think a lot of games are. We’re not alone in making a specific and emphatic statement about inclusivity, but I also know other games may not have it written as a policy but do encourage a community of that. I think generally MUSHers (and of course we have outliers) are a more accepting group in general as a population. I’d like to think so, anyway.

@Jennkryst said in MU Peeves Thread:

I am already totally breaking Rokugani culture with poorly though out setting changes for the L5R game that I surely won’t flake out on this time, what’s a few MORE changes to FauxSamurai gender roles and marriage customs?

Please make an L5R game. I know that some of the lore is problematic, but a lot of games are, and I really enjoyed it as a theme. I would LOVE to play on one.

I remember playing on one that was trying to get off the ground during the height of the CCG and right after they released the first edition of the mini game, but I don’t think it lasted.

@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:

So, the only real grey area is quite rare cases, such as an unmarried couple, a female character who wants to be single mum, or a same-sex couple who wants to have a child by surrogacy, as examples. From playing other Lords and Ladies-style games, all of these seem to be vanishingly rare in the genre.

I’m not sure if you mean that support for same-sex families is vanishingly rare or not, but when we stood up our L&L game we made it very explicit and purposeful that there is no discrimination or social mores against same-sex relationships, and children either adopted or born from one partner biologically but not the other are treated the same as children born biologically, etc. It was extremely important to us to create a safe space where people of all genders and inclinations could play the way that they wanted.

For the record, we handle IC pregnancy (which as a game that does generation fast forwards is actually rather important as the game BY DESIGN would allow for those children to potentially be played within a relatively short OOC time span) as simply as possible - the player(s) involved indicate consent in a job, boom. No one is going to care either way. (And yes, while we have not had that request, if a player wanted to be a single parent OR become pregnant with a character not played by a PC, we would allow for that too.)

@Rinel

I’m making a note to come back to this to comment when we finish resolving our current bit of “A PC just killed the King and every other PC wants to figure out which PC did it and how”.

So far, honestly, it is progressing wonderfully from where I sit, though.

@moth said in MU Peeves Thread:

@discoarse

their game topic link

Heh, thanks. I don’t know how to link, but that’s to the ad, not the discussion.

Although reading that thread I am reminded of the person who asked if they could play a bug loyalist, and re-read my response and I am now sad that the person did not come on and play a scientist who took the bug’s side for some reason, because that really would have been totally awesome.

One of the truly foundational pieces of our game is:

“We will let you attempt to do anything that you want to do, and deliver the justifiable consequences as a result.”

I’ve always enjoyed playing characters that make the wrong IC decision because I think it OOC leads to better story telling, and that’s been a great source of fun for me. Sometimes a frustration for a ST that expects a story to go on rails, and I just kindly see myself out of those games if it happens too often.

On ours? “Oh, you want to murder the King? OK, tell me how.”

And that, kids, is How I Buried Your King.

@Roz said in City of Glass - Discussion:

Yeah it was Polk, so.

I barely pay attention to these forums and saw this coming a mile away.

@SpaceKhomeini said in MU Peeves Thread:

You’re talking about an entire business culture that is descended (at least on the English-speaking side of things — who else would say “do the needful”) from Victorian British colonialism. You don’t emerge from that without some…recognizable quirks.

I’ve found that being polite and direct (at least in my time working at HCL and Microsoft) at the first given opportunity, i.e. “how can I help you? I’m engaged in something right now but have a few minutes” tends to be an effective shortcut.

Oh, I know. Honestly, I find it very pleasant generally speaking, and really enjoy working with my non-US colleagues (other than scheduling meetings during cross-over timezones). I just find it amusing to contrast that with the more, shall we say, assertive and abrupt nature of people from Philly and surrounding areas.

I think that LinkedIn article was super interesting, and it’s definitely reframed a bit of how I think.

And, I have to say - I have grown accustomed to “doing the needful”, and it just warms my heart now. I have no idea how that became the idiom, but it just works for me.

I think we can all agree that the following is horrible and should never be used except on your worst enemies:

You paged: Hi, can we talk?
<silence>

@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:

it’s absolutely a cultural thing and i also get it from some people at work. i don’t think it’s an american vs other countries thing tho, because i do experience it from americans.

in both MUs and work i try to just head it off at the pass by saying something like “hi! what can i do for you?”

Yeah, I’ve started doing that. And I was mostly trying to be funny, but didn’t mean to cast it as one group vs another.

Most of our US-based employees are from NY, NJ, and Philly, so…yeah. More of that than generic “American”.

@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:

when someone i don’t know pages “hi” and i say hi back and then they say “how’s it going” i want to scream

This is a personal pet peeve of mine as well, but I think it could be a cultural thing?

I get this all the time on Teams at work with our India based team. They send hi. I have to send hi back. They ask how I am doing, I have to say I am fine, how are you. Then they send all the stuff they need to talk to me about it.

I do not get this from our non-India-based teams. The Americans just start messages with “Do this thing” and skip the foreplay.

@Jennkryst said in Alveraxus:

Can we play bug loyalists? Asking for a bunch of wierdos…

I am not going to say that you cannot.

(This is only half-joking - we fully support players taking on various roles in engaging with our world, and some of them are not in alignment with others.)

We actually think having a scientist who is outspoken in stating that rather than war, the humans should seek a way to co-exist with the insects would be a really fascinating character to play.